Bureaucracy or politics in the case of Gibson?

Read it yourself or glance at this summary below – the comments section is as revealing as the post.

Basically, there is a law in the U.S. called the Lacey Act, 112 years old, which regulates the trade in bird feathers for hats. The idea was to protect rare species. Now we get into the first poltical rule if you wish to do something dastardly – do it under the guise of something altruistic, so that your shills and trolls can go to any dissent sites and shout “conspiracy theory”. Then go ahead carefully, covering your butt as you go.

The act was amended in 2008, pretty well cross-party, to cover wood and plants to make sure the woods used were not exported in violation of another country’s laws. We’re talking rare woods here. So we don’t actually have an issue at this point – most people would like to see rare earths, wood etc. protected.

The issue is in the application of the act. Looking at the headline of the article:

Feds threaten to disrupt summer concerts

… and read some of it and it appears that the Feds are going to stop any guitars with “suspicious” wood having made them since 2008. The article then concentrates on Lamar Alexander and mate loudly thumping the drum about how they “will write” and “will do something” about it for the sake of Tennessee and other places.

So you could say this is, as Chuckles puts it: “Bureaucrats and the iron law”. It’s bureaucracy run riot and is a commentary on the mindlessness of officialdom. We can shake our heads, palm our faces and move on, maybe blogging on it. I’m not sure whether Chuckles went any further with it but assuming he did, he’d have come across this:

It IS a political issue. USF&W says the wood Gibson had was illegal under the Lacey Act because is was illegaly harvested under Indian and/or Madagascar law. The Indian and Madagascar governments said, no, that wood was perfectly legal under our laws.

The USF&W responded, “Not the way we interpret your laws.” So what you have is a US gov’t agency deliberately mis-interpreting a foreign law to seize property from a US company that openly opposed the current administration.

Further, USF&W has refused to either file charges or return the seized property. When Gibson asked the Court to force the gov’t to give them their day in court or their property back, USF&W retailiated by raiding them again, seizing more property but still refusing to file charges or give Gibson it’s Constitutional right to their day in court.

Now that’s an entirely different matter. Naturally, leftist shills came in and pointed out that the head honcho at Gibson supported both Democrat and Republican in recent years, at local level. That may be so but another guy came in and pointed out that he is still a member of the Republican party and non-Union, at which another leftist came in and started about how Gibson mistreats its employees, despite a lack of documentary evidence in the form of judgements against Gibson that that was so.

And even had it been so, what has that to do with what the Feds were doing, targetting one company only in what was meant to be universal legislation? What, they hadn’t got round to the others yet?

Both sides do it from time to time but the left, with their NLP training and battery of weasel words, know that to make a casual assertion, as though it came from the shop floor, is usually enough to smear the opposition. Not too many uninvolved are ever going to check it out. People are lazy and would rely on a Republican to come in and correct this, which in fact one did.

Further, it was ONLY Gibson which was getting raided and guitars and guitar making wood taken away and impounded by two Fed raids. The word hovering on my lips but which I’m loathe to use because it’s overused by the left, is “fascism”. This really is jackboot stuff and is one of the reasons I detest the hypocrisy of the left.

They make a huge noise about being soft and kind and loving all little creatures and discriminating positively, in the nicest possible way yet behind that facade, they’re sinking the boot into freedom, then going back to their blogs and spouting the very word freedom. This comes out nauseatingly in the case of Kimberlin, coming up tomorrow and prefaced here.

………..

An aside to this is a blogger like Twilight. She says that these dastardly things are nothing to do with the Left, e.g. that teacher was known by the “Real Left” as an Obot. But as all these things are obviously not centre-right, e.g. Brett Kimberlin, then what are they? A glance at Twilight’s blog shows she’s of a Left which is the “feely-do good but never mind who’s using me without my knowledge” type which loves the earth and humanity and well done to her – so she should. So do I but I have the additional unfortunate trait of cynicism.

Yet we’re seeing the types of things I’m currently posting on happening with regularity, so if we of the “small state, freedom defending” centre-right libertarian area don’t claim such people and Twilight’s “be nice to one another” True Left doesn’t claim them, then who the hell are they?

They certainly claim that they’re of the Left and their attack targets are all conservative values. Could it be that these people are merely shills of the Global Left or Them, the Statist elite who are moving to snuff us out as human beings at this very time? You see, if you want to split hairs over who is the Real Left or the False Left, leave labels aside and looks at the values. These people, from that Obot to Kimberlin to Mulgan’s Common Purpose are all spouting the same thing, namely removal of freedom of thought, word and deed.

The “real left” in the US understands that Obama is centre right in his policies and intentions. The faux-left will not hear a word against the Prez – he can do no wrong in their eyes.
Democrats will not oppose him, even when he does stuff they’d have jumped on G.W. Bush for…..those are Obots.

Nothing to do with being “feely-do-good”, James. I’m not one of those – I’m a mild kind of socialist, registered as Independent voter, waiting for somebody in the USA to rally the troops and form a real left third party to break the duopoly of evil and lesser evil….but not holding my breath.

Twilight, let’s get one thing straight and even you can understand this. A man who spends out of trouble, proposes trillion dollar health schemes and expands bureaucracy is not centre-right, in any shape or form. He is Statist, the classic definition of left.

I don’t know if you are the same or not. Obama, by no definition ever proposed in C20th/21st political science, could be called right wing. For goodness sake, he’s from the Marxists. Have you never heard of Bill Ayres, his and Michelle’s friend? Have you seen what he proposed? wiki:

In 1969 he co-founded the Weather Underground, a self-described communist revolutionary group[2] that conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings during the 1960s and 1970s

Here is the distinction between the two. I deliberately chose a neutral, not a leftist definition nor a rightist:

As you see in that, if you claim you’re left wing, then you’re for higher taxation, State control to achieve the social change you want, killing off free enterprise and ordering people’s lives according to your ideology. You might personally be for tolerating personal slackness but you’d invoke the State to achieve it and do not value personal freedom or dissent.

To be leftwing is also to be for inequality [disguised under the buzzword “fairness”], for example social discrimination in favour of women and against men or promoting minorities over the majority. Leftwing people generally ignore the economic consequences of their ideas and instead feel comfortable with their feelgood politics, divorced from reality.

The right favours the majority of people in the land and the natural order, free of interference.

If you claim you’re right wing, you’re for free enterprise, family, order, initiative, discretion [these two buzzwords are always used], freedom of the individual to self-determination and basically for the State to butt out of people’s lives. right wing people tend to ignore social change in favour of sound economic management.

Now everyone knows that, the tea party was based on that definition of right, so why do you say things like that about Obama, who is nothing of the kind?

Right wing governments [and let’s not go extreme right or extreme left here but keep it near the centre] have always favoured the smaller state, free enterprise, lower taxes, freedom of discretion, making one’s own way, social order, supporting our defence forces, patriotism and so on. The criticism you could make is they’re less concerned with legislating for employment, considering that expanded business will provide jobs.

Leftwing governments have always meant higher taxation, expanding bureaucracy, running grandiose problems which, though they want to give fairness to all, ruin economies because they steal from the taxpayer and the ideologies have never, ever worked. No leftwing government anywhere in the world has had their programme work. The closest you could get is the Israeli kibbutz or Sweden, the suicide centre of the world.

Statist, non-free-enterprise countries always stagnate, incentive is low, discretion is virtually non-existent and the regime becomes totalitarian, exactly what the centre-right is against and Obama is for.

AKH provides a good addition to this:

Nothing wrong with cynicism. Some on the left, maybe many, are well-meaning but far, far to naive in the support they give to feelgood politics with a totalitarian core.

Haiku – that’s right. That timber was not illegal by any of the definitions Obama’s government wants to impose. it wasn’t illegal because it was pre-2008, the governments of those countries saw it as above board – the only people who don’t are Obama’s stormtroopers.

I have not the will or enthusiasm to go into sufficient detail to answer your remarks, above, James. I am in the USA, you are in the UK, our perspectives have to be different.

As I’ve said before about Obama – whatever are his core beliefs (nobody knows this for sure) if they are leftist/Marxist or anything like, he does not act on them. He is obliged to dance to the tune of Wall Street (& THEM) and the elites who throw money at his campaign. He’s a puppet. He talks a good leftist game or did in 2008, to get the masses enthused, but played differently once ensconced as President.

I’d say that the importance of the notion of “personal responsibility” is of the Right rather than the Left. I would also say that it is a key element in the building of a stable and prosperous society. Certainly, it seems to have been the subject of a prolonged and largely successful onslaught by the late unlamented Labour government in the UK.

Those perspectives were from the U.S.A, not the UK. The examples used were U.S., not UK.

As for Obama dancing to Wall Street, yes he does and so have all presidents. They also dance to the CFR, TLC and the Masons.

Those people this blog refers to as Them but you can call them as you wish. They are global socialists because socialism means the society run by a group of people at the top and they have control over the lives of the citizens.

In the U.S., this has been the whole nature of the protest – against Washington’s Big Brother tactics. This was what the Tea-Party was about – ordinary people suffering under Washington taxation. The left was also against Washington kowtowing and called it Occupy but naturally got it wrong and saw the problem as free enterprise, not as global Socialists like Dimon, Rockefeller et al.

The left fails to see that the Dimons of the world have zero to do with the corner store owner who just wants to provide for his family and give a few people jobs. They fail to see that what they are protesting against in Wall Street is their own socialism on a global scale.

When I say “own socialism”, I mean that in order to achieve any of the social legislation, e.g. anti-men discrimination, it can’t be done without the very State they were protesting against at Wall Street.

No one’s saying the left or what you’d call the Real Left is not into social betterment – it is – and the left can be compassionate but they don’t see, as AKH says, the totalitarianism behind what they propose and support.

A new economic order of course. On what model and run by whom? By the very people we’re all railing against – the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, IMF, WB and all the rest of that lot.

I’ve quoted these people. They all want world government – they’ve said it, they’ve used those words. In other words, compulsion under them as rulers.

Left wing politics is not going to stop this. The only thing which is going to stop it is a vibrant U.S.A. and the only way to get that is to bring back the old U.S. initiative, where people can make what they can of themselves. Low taxes, entrepeneurship, starting businesses, producing things the world wants, employment – that’s the only way to stop “Them”.

James, you say “The only thing which is going to stop it is a vibrant U.S.A. and the only way to get that is to bring back the old U.S. initiative, where people can make what they can of themselves. Low taxes, entrepeneurship, starting businesses, producing things the world wants, employment – that’s the only way to stop “Them”.

James – you are living in a dream world – there’s no way to turn the clock back to what you see as the golden era of the USA. Things are too far gone.

What would be your plan to get back to this? It sounds good, but the current mess is what we have when ordinary people are fooled into thinking they can have everything, low taxes, own houses, big cars, luxury on tap – by those who only want to scam the system and line their own pockets. They have done so.

A “vibrant USA” sounds good, that’s all. The right, even the best of ’em, won’t bring it about. They’d make the USA into a theocracy as well as a plutocracy…..call that vibrant?

I agree that if a violent revolution were ever to occur though, things could, and probably would, swing to the other extreme.

I don’t know the answer. Getting corporate money out of US politics would be a start, but that’s not going to happen this side of a revolution.

It’s a big hot mess, and as far as I can see there are no real, workable, answers. Some kind of catastrophe, natural or otherwise, might turn things around and allow a fresh start, but I hesitate to wish for such a thing.

Twilight, it’s fantasyland for you to believe that you can create a utopia – it’s too far gone. I’ve blogged over and over and over about Them, I’ve given chapter and verse and even said what they’re going to do.

You’re just NOT going to reverse this trend now unless you strengthen your institutions which got you a reasonable life in the first place and those institutions were not your socialism.

One of two things is going to happen. Either we’ll go into slavery to the NWO, which is likely at this rate, or some miracle will occur. The only miracle which can occur, short of the Rapture, is for institutions like the family, patriotism, neighbourliness, free enterprise to aggressively reassert themselves in a local way.

Let me illustrate why. The NWO’s mantra is:

1) Abolition of all ordered governments
2) Abolition of private property
3) Abolition of inheritance
4) Abolition of patriotism
5) Abolition of the family
6) Abolition of religion
7) Creation of a world government

So logically, people need to cling on to those. If the NWO wants free enterprise overthrown, you don’t give it to them. It’s not hard to see what they’re angling for and the only solution is to do the opposite.

In other words, people decide among themselves they’ve just had enough and will aggressively defend the things on that list.

It has to be fought for by asserting the right and the constitution. For a start, the citizenry are armed – there are caches all over the U.S.A. and this thing’s only going to be decided by arms.

Then people cease to cooperate. Obama or whoever it is calls for a militia – people fail to enlist and instead strengthen their barricades. Towns set up defences and cooperate with other towns, interlinked across the country. Any federal forces are sabotaged.

Non-compliance rules. The TV calls all these people, the millions of them, traitors and the propaganda sways quite a few until, like the Bastille, they finally realize which side is the people.

There’s going to be civil war. There are too many quislings dotted through the country and people who simply don’t know [mainly the naive left]. They’ll take longer to see it because they’re brainwashed of course.

The way the left wanted to tear down free enterprise at Occupy was like Skynet in Terminator. It was seen as the big fix but of course, it had been factored in. If Occupy had succeeded, it would have handed the U.S. to the NWO there and then.

The thing was, Occupy was never going to succeed, how could it? It was funded by Soros and pals, just as the Kochs were behind the Tea Party. Seriously, what did you think would happen? Dimon walks out and says: “You’re so right. We’ll close the Fed now.”

You speak of a dream world but this is precisely what Occupy supporters were in. This thing is not going to end so prettily, no one is going to hand over power like that. It’s going to be bloody.

And if you try to stop the lifeblood of the nation – it’s freedom to produce and trade – which the left wants, then there are no defences remaining.

Once again, it is the aggressive reassertion, at local level, of the way of life which made America great – and if anyone can do it, the Americans are pugnacious enough – it is that and total noncooperation with the Federal government which will make it unworkable for them.

At the moment, people are demoralized and divided – the global socialist NWO plan – but people given a glimpse of hope will always suddenly find a new lease of life – we’ve all done it when least expected and the Feds are not going to overcome that. What they want is everyone disagreeing, at each other’s throats, tearing each other apart, divided [Lincoln mentioned it].

Once people finally see a common enemy – Them, working through Washington – then attitudes harden, people begin to wake up, it’s back to revolutionary days in people’s minds.

In the UK, that would be naive to hope for because it’s been demographically white-anted by the socialists – they’re on record as saying that the idea was to flood the country with immigrants – but in the U.S., you guys still love your constitution and structures and will fight for them – at least those right of centre, the patriots, will.

It’s quite simple. If it’s a dreamworld to dare to succeed, then so be it. The way I see it, there is no other choice. If you guys don’t defend your land, then you fall.

Talk about a guy talking out of his backside – no understanding of Russia in the least, Ames. I know the type in Moscow, ran a radical “yellow press”, political heavyweight he ain’t. He has a Russian wife now. He wrote in the linked article above:

At the end of the 1990s, after the total collapse of the mass-privatization experiment in Boris Yeltin’s Russia, some of the more earnest free-market proselytizers tried making sense of it all.

Not anyone in the know. Anyone in the know knew it was never free enterprise at all. Privatization does not mean free enterprise – it means that the State monopoly becomes a private monopoly or monopolies and that’s exactly what happened in Russia. He quotes Hayek but what has that to do with Russia?

Question – why is Ames back in the States? Answer – his paper was shut down in 2008. So where was this free enterprise? And it was only possible in Moscow because Russia had to be seen to be tolerant. This is why Echo Moskvi continues [or did – I’m not up to date on that one].

What happened in Russia was that the oligarchs stole the wealth and many of those are still holed up, protected by the British government, in London. So free enterprise was never going to be allowed to happen and in fact, it didn’t.

All that happened was that members of the soviet elite who ran the black markets now took control of the resources, esp. oil and gas, and ran them as a mafia. The people themselves never saw any of it. Slowly it dawned on Moscow, especially as a result of the NWO wishing to proselytize in the country, that they had to allow some room to move for the people.

The Club of Paris and others had lent Moscow billions. They insisted things be privatized, that western goods come in, esp white goods. Everyone wanted the lifestyle but didn’t have the money. So a certain amount of freeing up of wages was necessary to develop “the consumer”. Those in better jobs became the new “upper middle” and these were my clients over there.

Still it wasn’t enough and so credit became more mainstream in the early 2000s – subprimes were being lent enormous amounts and prices went through the roof. A 2R flat went from $18 000 when I arrived to about $100 000 a decade later. People could only get the things of their whetted appetites by credit. And that was controlled by the banks. And the banks were controlled within Russia by the mafia/state mafia and by criminal organizations in Europe such as the ECB and the EBRD.

So there was only free enterprise for a brief period from about 1995 to about 1999. Local authorities came through and bulldozed the little markets which had been set up all over the place. The problem was, people were using these, at much lower prices and weren’t going to the big, official barns at inflated prices. In other words, with free enterprise, people were actually getting what they needed, at prices they could afford.

That had to stop. The whole idea was a non free-enterprise system, bank controlled and so we all saw these things shut down. Even the grannies who had lined the sides of the road were initially shifted away but then allowed back later – under the control of the mafia, who took their cut.

So this guy in the article speaks of “free enterprise” when there never really was any. On top of that, he’s trying to draw parallels between the States and Russia – two entirely different nations with different histories. That’s the sort of literature which, if you’re reading it, shows why you’re a bit off the pace.

Twilight, there ain’t no free enterprise. Not here, not over there any more in your land and certainly not in Russia. This is what we are all going on about the whole time but of course, being of the left, you never read these things. Go to a blogger like Tim Worstall – writes for the MSM now – he’s in my blogrolls. He’s a major blogger here. Ask him about whether we have free enterprise or not.

Of course we don’t – we have a controlled economy under the banks which run the Fed, which runs Washington. Over here, one simply can’t start up a business without jumping through hoops controlled by the government and banks. There’s a blackmarket, e.g. in cigarettes and other things, cars go to France to bring back booze and sell it but that’s about all. There’s no true free enterprise.

Well, I know diddly-squat about Russia, so will assume that there’s a bit of truth in both sides’ views (that’s almost always the case anyway, in any debate/argument.)

As for the USA – what you envisage could well come to pass – but not yet. THEY have grown clever and know just how far they can go without the Great Unwashed rebelling.
They’ll keep us just below boiling point for a decade more at least. I’m sticking to 2025-ish ss my prediction for date of an uprising of some kind here, absent any kind of catastrophe in the meantime. How it would turn out would depend a lot on whether the military, or some of them, sided with the people.

Glad to see this being publicised more – shocking state of affairs. Last I heard there were pallets and pallets of impounded Gibson owned timber sitting in some government warehouse, gathering dust (and therefore, of course, earning nothing for its owners) waiting for an adjudication as to whether the timber did actually contravene any regulations, and whether charges should be brought against Gibson.